Jasper was almost knocked back, as the once overloaded game cell cancelled all the game states that it had been setting up. It was fast and overwhelming, every gust of wind that had been trapped suddenly blowing, every bird that had tried to fly suddenly reaching Mach 2 speeds, and saplings growing into trees in the blink of an eye.

  Maybe Jasmine was right. Maybe Jasper really was a fool. It would have been better to resolve this through his programming tools.

  Riez had been bored out of her skull. This game was far more boring than she had ever expected. Who in their right mind would spend a day just walking? Where was the fast travel? It had been sort of entertaining to see everyone slow down. Even with Jasper's magic, they had been so very slow. However, as Jasper unleashed the frozen battle, Riez could feel her eyes grow twice as big with excitement. Finally, she had something to do.

  She instantly engaged the ancient lich and the demi-god in battle, ready to annoy them both to the point of defeat. She couldn't be stopped. She wouldn't be stopped, as she moved faster than she had any right to, instantly making it to the side of Dranos. The elf was already unleashing some hideous projectile in the shape of a skull, burning with green fire. Riez let it fly, and she tried to direct it to arch in a large circular pattern, going for it, hitting the pompous elf in the butt.

  It was surprisingly hard to do, feeling her Domain struggle to entrap the magic in the same way it had the massive boulder she had used against the trolls. It wasn't that magic was more complicated, it was the fact that it hadn't been targeting her. As such, the Domain of Vengeance seemed to recoil from her intent.

  The projectile unleashed, and with a howl of joy, Dranos screamed his spell's name, "SIPHON LIFE!". The lich was more than happy to unleash their own magic. "?????? ?????? ?????? ???? ?????????? ???? ?????? ?????????? ???? ????????????????????. ?????? ???????? ?????? ?????? ???????????? ???????? ?????? ??????????. ?????? ???? ???????? ?????? ???????? ???????? ?????????? ????." And while Dranos' spell hit the lich, clearly drawing away some of its life-force, the ancient skeleton plunged his hand into the tufts of grass and laughed. Blue, arcane light flowed from their skeletal arms, pouring into the ground.

  Long cracks of magic seemed to spread out, and for a heartbeat, nothing seemed to happen. Then, the first decayed arm holding a sword sprang from a suspiciously lumpy piece of firegrass.

  All around them, the once slain rose, orks and humans alike, all standing from their once eternal rest. As the first stood, it was clear that a glowing blue light was lodged in its chest, though thick black tar seemed to spill from this source, coating limbs and bones alike. It splattered onto the ground, making it sizzle as if the strange liquid was boiling. "???????????? ???? ???????? ???? ?????? ????????????!" the lich screamed.

  Riez looked over to Jasper, only to find him arguing with Jasmine. The goddess of trickery would have to hold off the army of undead until the two spellcasters could figure out a way to fix this. She knew what she had to do, though it honestly pained her to do so. With nought but a thought, she willed her army of orks, who had sworn loyalty to her, to charge the undead horde.

  As one of the chaotic mass of greenskins seemed to focus, like a group of dogs all discovering the sound of a squirrel at the same time. They did not question their instincts to fight the army before them. They did not hesitate to grab the closest weapon. The fact that the legion of undead had to be three times as many as they were did not even seem to be considered. They all charge, not in a coherent, synergised battle formation, but as they found their weapons, they went out to kill whatever was in their way.

  The lich snarled, and with a wave of its hand it unleashed a spell towards Dranos, the demigod more than happy to have his focus pulled back to the fight instead of standing around, stunned by the army of undead around him.

  Riez made her way over to the two spellcasters, just to hear what their plans were. However instead of them figuring out a plan, she heard them argue over who was the undead army.

  "I don't know why you are even arguing with me," Jasper said sternly. "I am the literal God of Knowledge. I know everything. Why are you trying to argue against me on this one? I know for a fact that the orks and humans fought against each other at the battle of Ashure hill when-" He was cut off by Jasmine.

  "If you really are de god av knowledge, den you would know dat you are wrong. Dat is de army av Silfe, wan av Ewen's Grandmasters. She was an ork 'erself, and quite a good elementalest. You are talking gobshite" she barked.

  Riez absolutely considered slapping the sense out of both of them. Could they not see that there was a lich, an undead army and a demi-god to worry about?

  "Oh yea? Then why don't they have any spellcasters, Scribe? Checkmate" Jasper said with a smug attitude and Riez honestly wondered if he was less insufferable when he didn't know everything, or if Celeste just had bad taste.

  Jasmine seemed to want to slap the god, a feeling that seemed to be a fairly common denominator between everyone he had an interaction with. "Dat would be due to de in'erent magical protecshuns dat spellcasters have, you daft bastard god? And even so, Silfe didn't really have dat many spellcasters in 'er army. S'e was more a guiding force."

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  When Jasper was about to come up with another rebuttal, Riez stepped in. "Yes, yes, you both make mighty fine points. But could we actually deal with some of these beings? At the very least, the lich?"

  She pointed out and saw what could only be described as a bloodbath. While the orks were empowered by Riez's Domain of Loyalty, they still appeared to be little match for the undead. She saw one of the massive trolls, that even she had needed to use divine powers to try and take down, swing a hand over their shoulder and try to slam into one of the undead creatures, only for the undead warrior to not only tank the hit with seemingly little problems, but pull on the arm of the troll and tug it off balance.

  Looking out over the two armies clashing, it was clear that the undead possessed greater numbers, but also uncanny strength far beyond even the battle-hardened orks. Had it not been for their divine empowerment from Riez, they would probably have been slaughtered when they first made contact. The unnatural coordination of the undead was matched by the divine manoeuvring of the strengthened orks, and yet, they were still outmatched and outnumbered.

  The undead weren't immortal. However, it took between 3 to 4 orks to bring one of the undead down, which the greenskins managed to accomplish by pulling the undead into their ranks and then just wailing on them to the point where the only thing that was left was crushed bones in that inky, thick, tar-like substance. It was only then that the blue light went out. If the light didn't go out, the undead would simply rise again, reshaping from the goo, and attacking the orks from behind.

  Riez heard Jasper make a noise of worry, and she had to agree, this was worse than she had estimated. There were no saving the orks at this point, they were too committed to the battle and pulling them out would leave them undefended, and allowing the incredibly fast undead to pour over their ranks with ease.

  "Why are they so strong?" was the only thing that ran through Riez's head, and she must have said it out loud, because Jasper gave a groan.

  "They have no stats. Dead bodies are technically objects, and raising them makes them into an animated shell," he answered. "The game doesn't assign them new stats, but instead uses object stats, meaning that they need to be completely broken before they are considered defeated." Riez pulled up her interface, but saw that he had already marked that as a bug.

  Jasper nodded, and with a burst of elemental prowess alongside his multicoloured wings, the wind carried him into the sky, where he started to rain fireballs down on the army, like some magic-powered fantasy bomber plane.

  Riez could see the lich turn its attention to the new combatant, and even Dranos seemed to focus on Jasper over the lich.

  Jasmine sighed, rushed to the golden dragon before taking flight. She moved to fight against the two spellcasters as well, but the goddess of trickery could feel her Loyalty Domain scream that this was suboptimal. Riez was designed for combat against single foes, while the other two had builds that catered to fights against large groups.

  Riez looked at her stats, with no Energy spent and no damage taken, she was ready to fight.

  In a flash, she made her way to Dranos and the Lich. They were still standing fairly close to each other, the old wizard headmaster having thrown down some protective circle to prevent the undead army from touching him, and the Lich seemed to revel in the fact that someone had come to challenge him personally.

  Riez gave them both a light poke, something that barely could be considered an attack. It was simply to catch their attention as she mentally prepared to spin some of the most outrageous lies she had ever told. She could see them turn their attention to her, and she flexed her Deception Domain to create a minor illusion of an English police helmet and a handlebar moustache on her face.

  She found that the system didn't really tax her energy for such minor miracles, especially if it meant to humiliate others. She spoke loudly when she knew that she had both their attention. "RIGHT! What is all this then? Unauthorised magic? In the middle of the day? Not very clever, is it?"

  Dranos and the Lich seemed stunned, unable to speak, which fit Riez nicely. She instead focused on carrying the momentum she had gotten from catching them off guard. "Well, well, well, I hope you have your LICENSE in order. Can't have people popping up undead armies wherever they want now, can we?" She gave an exaggerated laugh before turning her eyes on both of them with cold suspicion.

  Jasper looked down, completely stunned. He had been firing fireballs into the army to catch the attention of the two mages, forcing them to counterspell his magic, but instead, they had started to target him. Furthermore, his fireballs, despite being divinely infused, did hardly any damage to the undead. They were much too tough for their own good. Now, however, Riez had wandered in between the two spellcasters, seemingly with nothing but a Halloween version of a constable outfit and a dream.

  He was impressed, and it allowed him and Jasmine to focus on the horde of undead that was rapidly chewing through the ork army.

  Riez shook her head as both of the wizards handed her pieces of paper, something that they hadn't known they had on them, but thanks to the Goddess's Trickery, their licenses suddenly manifested. "Roight! These are both expired. You are both going to have to come with me until we can get this sorted out." And with as confident a swagger as she could manage, she started to walk out of the army, seemingly expecting the two spellcasters to follow after her... and they did.

  Riez moved them out of the battle, though the undead seemed to be just as strong as before, despite the lich not being among them. It took them a solid ten minutes before they finally realised that everything the little policewoman with the handlebar moustache had said was nonsense. "?????? ???????????? ???? ?????????? ???? ???????????????? ?????? ?????? ???????????????? ?????????????? ???? ???????? ?????????????????? ??????. ???????? ?????? ???????" Lich's words seemed to vibrate through the world as they clearly held back quite a bit of rage.

  Dranos shook his head and levelled a hand against the intruder. "It does not matter. What she is, is dead!" And with that, he unleashed that green flaming skull that he had tried to use on the lich when Riez first interacted with him.